Fortnite Battle Royale makes up for its jetpack delay with a new Teams of 20 mode that sounds just as ridiculous

Fortnite Battle Royale pits five teams of 20 against each other in Epic's latest multiplayer event

Let’s start with the bad news first. No, it doesn’t look like the jetpack is coming to Fortnite Battle Royale today, despite being teased by Epic Games last week before the studio walked back on its promise by admitting the item needed a little more time in the development oven.

As a way of keeping things exciting despite the notable absence of mechanised hovercraft, though, a new limited time mode has gone live for the free-to-play multiplayer PvP game, and it’s appropriately bonkers.

It’s called Teams of 20, and it’s exactly what it sounds like, pitting five teams of 20 players against each other until the last squad standing claims victory. You can check us out playing the mode in the video at the top.

So it’s basically the Fortnite Battle Royale experience you know and love, but with extra heapings of squad-based madness, where cooperation plays a key part in the competition. If you played last year’s 50v50 mode, you can expect something similar in terms of more chaotic crafting and large scale firefights, but it’s hard to predict how the dynamics of this one will play out compared to Fortnite Battle Royale’s traditional Solo, Duos, and Squads modes.

In one of our early games, for example, we won the match without encountering a single enemy player. Not anyone's idea of fun, even if it was a smooth ride to an easy victory.

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Interestingly, Epic has increased the chance of chest and ammo box spawns across the Battle Royale map for Teams of 20, and reduced the number of storm circles from 9 to 6, speeding up the pace of matches from 25 minutes to 23 minutes. Oh, and you now get the elimination credit if you kill someone with fall damage. Hooray for gravity!

Today’s update, which has gone out across PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 this morning, also comes loaded with a number of hotfixes for Battle Royale, in addition to a new “Burnout” outfit (possibly a reference to the incoming Burnout Paradise remaster), and a few other goodies for game’s Save the World PvE experience. You can read the full patch notes right here.

Will you be playing Teams of 20? Or do you prefer the core Battle Royale experience as it stands, free of any gimmickry? Let us know in the comments below.